Boys

Nico & I pick up H from school in the bike trailer and its getting tight for the boys.

Here's a pic from December 07.

And a picture from last Thursday -July 08. The top is snapped shut on the ride, as soon as I stop the boys have to open it up.

I came home to this one day last week. A HUGE pile of Lego, it looked like the Lego dinosaur took a huge dump in the living room.
Mr. Nico sitting at his desk watching Pingu or playing games. He can spawn his own browser & go to youtube or nick jr!

Christmas book

I was decluttering a shelf and found a KaiserCraft wood board book that I forgotten about. I also came across a package of Scenic Route Roxbury that would be perfect for last year's Christmas pictures.
The book measures 9in at its longest & 7in tall and it is heavy. I coverd the 4 sections with paper & added a title using the SR letters. I cut out some trees, squiggled some Glossy Accents on them & glue them to the cover.
I added 2 pages of chipboard that were covered with SR graph paper that came with the paper collection.
Second page in the Santa section. Nico would not look at Santa and if he caught Santa looking at him, he would start to cry. Hopefully this year will be better.

The boys looking cute.

I tied the book together with ribbons.

Cheap frame

I came across these dollar spot frames I bought last year and decided to do a quick project using up scraps. I had a bo-bunny sticker sheet with a large tag that says "summer fun" with a big sun on the bottom half. I cut out the sun & popped off the frame after inking the edges with chalk ink. The Delight is stamped with those great Dawn Hauser stamps with chalk ink & the negative space filled with white sharpie. I cut out a hibiscus & glue a button to the middle for some weight.

Some more paint

I stamped the background with a piece of chipboard (american craft star) & paint. I used a glue dot to attach the chipboard to an acrylic stamp block and used Dabber paints to create a stamp.


A page about Nico jumping on the bed, he's not suppose to jump on the bed but he thought he could get away with it when my back was turned. Like I'm not going to hear the boing & giggles.
I went over the paint shapes with a white sharpie & a black pen.

Mr. potato-head

Nico's favorite part of playing with Mr. Potato-head - wearing those tiny glasses.
I stamped circles across the bkgd with blue paint, the circle was created from the bottom of a can of embellishments.

Glaze paint

I was working with these aquarium pics & grafton papers with the fishes and wanted something for the background. I mixed up some Glossy Accents with a dab of lime green paint, mixed well and used some bubble wrap to create "bubbles" rising the fishies. The glaze creates a stained glass effect if applied to a large area. I was just going for some bubbles.

Paint & bubblewrap

Did a page tonight using some bubble wrap & paint. It is another picture from my disney passholder days. The best exhibit at Epcot was the Coca-Cola room, it was cold, dark and quiet. The exhibit disppeared a few years later and replaced with store that sells trading pins.


P

H & the music

H got a little mp3 player for his birthday from Uncle John & donna. I loaded some They Might Be Giants on it and he is just digging the music. He gave me a show the other day, he had to dance on the coffee table with the stage lights on (overhead fan).

4th of July

This is how Nico watched the fireworks - he does not like the loud noise. Goofy boy.

Henry showing off his box of booty. Mostly poppers, smoke bombs & fountains.

H watching a fountain display.

H & his birthday present

Posing with Peaches - his betta fish. I think the fish already knows about hamming it for the camera.



The fish is cute & easy too.

A sketch challenge

Sketch A

Got off my butt

Finally got motivated this morning and did some stuff. A door hanger using left over scraps & chipboard.
A page I did as a challenge on m2r.com

A challenge on m2r.com - black cardstock & bright photos.

Nico calling grandma - pretending to have a "hands-free" ear piece.

Worked the weekend

I taught 2 classes on Saturday, a total of 16 students! Afterwards Jen and I put together our annual christmas card camp that's on July 22.

Then on Sunday we were back at the store decorating for Christmas in July. I also finalized the next three months of "Eat Your Veggies" kits and packed July's kit which is Jen's favorite so far - SEI papers.

Happy Birthday Henry

My baby boy is 5 years old today. So far he has had 2 time-outs in 40mins and now is having a meltdown over not getting m&m's. Grandma sent him $20, so he hit me up for fish. He got a 1 gallon jar with some plants & neon gravel, now we're just waiting for the tank to settle before he gets his little neon tetras or something.

It's Thursday

On tuesday the ENT drained my ear - he actually punctured my ear and sucked out fluid! He numbed the area and then made a lot of crunchy noise while "working" on the problem. He said there is 2% chance that the hole might not close up, in the mean time plug my ear with some wax to keep water out of it. Also found out that I have 30% hearing loss in my right ear & 10% in my left. Dr said I'll be looking at hearing aids by the time I'm 45.

If I have an issues then come back in before the next appt. in a month. If the ear fills up again or I still feel like a marshmellow is shoved in my ear then he's sending me in for an MRI. He says the issue would not be the ear but the brain. Ughh not what I want to hear.

H. is not happy to get out of bed in the morning, he rolls over and says let me sleep. I agree, I do not like getting out of bed at 6.3oam either. Once he's at school than he's happy to go, he asks me to pick him up early so he can go home and sleep. Ya right that kid take a nap.

School

H. started VPK this morning - volunteer pre-kinder - at the bright hour of 7.30am. He says he wants to stay all day which ends at 6pm, he hasn't been in a program that lasted that long EVER. I am planning on picking him up around 4.30pm, 6pm is a long time for his first day of "school".

He is in Mrs. F class, he had her last year (3 weeks ago) in kindy integration during the last few months of pre-k. He loves her, I hope he has her for kindergarten which starts 20 days after VPK. The kid is not getting much of a summer break.

I finally did a page about last year's first day of summer school. He was still 3 years old in this picture, he would be four 3.5 weeks later. He hated going to "that school", it was a different elementary school & he said it was boring and the teacher wouldn't let him eat. @@ (eyeroll). The only reason he wanted to go was to ride the bus across town, he was on the bus longer than in the classroom. In the morning it was 30min trip but the trip home was 90-120 mins! But he loved every minute of it. I seriously thought & talked about taking him of the summer program because of the bus ride, but I didn't want him missing out on speech therapy & social cues.

Migraine

I was down with a strange migraine Tuesday until late Thursday and then lingering headache for the last few days. I rarely have visual auras associated with migraines and Tuesday I had a doozy. It was like I was wearing swim goggles filled with oil, wavy & motion sickness.

H. was love, he knows what a migraine is & how miserable you are. The almost 5 year old has had 3 migraine in the last 8 months, gotta love family genes. He would come in to check on me and ask if I needed anything, then he would shoo nico out of the bedroom and close the door.

All is better and tomorrow I'm going in to the ENT to have my ear drained. Three rounds of antibiotics (last ones made me very icky - top & bottom) and 2 rounds of steroids didn't clean out the fluid so this is the last resort before tubes.

Disney page #2

Decided to do a facing page with some photos from the same day at Disney. I was lucky to find a piece of "tortilla" bazzill cardstock in my stash to match the left side. All I had left over from the other page was a square about 6x6 of pattern paper and some cut out stars.

Digging out some Disney

Totally forgot about this page for the Doodle dt, the packet contained 1 sheet of pattern paper (double sided), 3 sheets of cardstock (orange, lime, tortilla), 3 buttons & the pkg of AC rub-ons (animals). So this is what I came up with an hour later, I threw on some paint to off set the picture and cut out some freehand stars.



DT work can be a hairpuller but I really like to work with just paper & build from there. Not to much of an embellishment person other than handmade or cut from the paper itself.

Few pages

A few pages from the last few days, i've been able to do a page a day. Pretty slow but I like the pages.

H. the chatterbug -sitting on the bed talking, talking, talking...


Nico came out of his bedroom one morning & declared "ME DRESSED!" he sure was - clothes inside out & unders over short.


H. spring 2007 school picture. He such a little guy in this picture, i love that he is wearing the orange UV watch that he found in the toy bin the day before.

Joe's kidney stone

Yesterday morning as we were getting dressed to head over to MOSI, Joe slides to floor in extreme pain. Over the course of the day Joe is withering around in bed and moaning, finally at 7pm he says he's ready to go the the ER.

We load up and head over UCH carrollwood ER, luckily its not busy at all and Joe is seen within 15mins. I left with the boys right before he was called back, they were acting up and tired.

Joe called me at 10.30pm saying he is being released, come get me. Once again I load up the sleeping boys and head over the hospital.

Joe was in fact passing a kidney stone. Doc told him to drink lots more water and watch his weight.

Funny boys

While cooking dinner last night, the boys were painting at the table or so I thought. I wasn't paying that much attention to them since they were chatting and not bothering me. H tells me to look at them "we being statues". I looked over at them and there they were covered in paint from head to toe.



The look on Nico's face is priceless - wonder what he was thinking.


I should have kept a closer watch on them because the night before H covered himself and became ....."SUPER PAINTER GUY!" seriously that's what he called himself. Here he is showing off his super power moves - blasting a hole in the wall.




It's only paint and I got some good pictures out of these "artistic adventures".

This week's pages

I did the first 3 pages while at the doodle, so I use what I had on hand.

Where is Nico? - Inque Boutique paper, circle diecut (?), Doodlebug letters (love them). Just noticed that the button emb. that I had on the right of the title is missing. There is something there to balance the title.

Evil Eyes - funny joe stated this gag with post it notes to the forehead. H. loved to get the laughs. Pink Paislee stamps (alpha), Scenic Route papers.


Oh Boy! = using up leftover pieces of Cosmo Cricket papers. The bkgd is Daisy D.


AHH! - crazy H. whooping it up for the camera. Prima "dude collection" paper, Bazzill cardstock strip, Inque Boutique chipboard bubble, Pink Paislee stamp.

Watch Me! - a very different page, i didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with 6 pics but I knew it wasn't going to be a double pager! After 2 days of staring at them on my desk I just painted/stenciled some arrows around the edge of the paper and glued the pics down. I actually like the way it came out - I wanted to some motion.

H. had a headache most of yesterday and then a full blown migraine by 8pm. Poor kid. He fell asleep around 9pm and woke up 30 mins later screaming. Joe picked him up and H. tossed his milk all over joe & the luckily the bathroom. Joe was taking H to the bathroom, quick thinking. I had to run out to the store and get some motrin & tylenol how ever you spell it, I had given him the last drops early in the day. Within 30mins of throwing up and taking a Tylenol meltaway, he was asleep again and sleep all through the night. This morning he woke up like his perky regular self and said he feels much better.

Kits Kits Kits

I went to the doodle and put together 3 pages in 13 hrs. Actually I did 3 pages and then picked the next 3 months of kits, so a lot of time was me walking in circles and thinking about the kits & embellishments.

The first kit of Eat Your Veggies has done spectacularly well, there is only one kit left! We sold more kits in these 3 weeks than the number of layouts I have done in 2 months.

3 pages

I finally got around to scrapping a few pages yesterday & today. I am loving those Doodlebug letters.

Basic Grey Cupcake line, AL stamp, felt, 7g & MM heidi rub-ons - those suckers are probably 4 yrs old and still work great.

Boy Under
Goofy H and his under problem - wearing them backwards. New Inque Boutique papers, AL stamp & AC felt letters. It needs something added for balance, I'm still digging thru the bins.


Monkey Boy- FP felt monkey that I stitched white thread through for some shape & Cosmo Cricket papers. 12x12 page with one picture OMG. I rarely waste a 12x12 cardstock for one picture but it works (it was a semi lift).

Nico disappeared again, this time on Joe. He fell asleep under his little couch in the living room, he blends in well.

Here's another gift card holder done in different papers.

Just 2 more days of school, then a 3 week break and school starts up again. I so hope they do not have to wear uniforms for the summer session, i am so tired of green & khaki! H has clothes in his closet that he has only worn twice before he outgrew them. I'm about to not buy any clothes other than khaki shorts & hunter green or white shirts.